Windows 8 Developer Preview, VirtualBox (Quick Test)

Like many other developers and geeks (according to what I read on twitter yesterday), I tested the developer preview of Windows 8. But I only wanted to do a quick and dirty test. Then I installed Win8 in VirtualBox:

3 – Create a virtual machine (I selected a Win7 64-bit system, with 40GB of HDD) with VirtualBox, I called it Win8Box.

4 – Start the virtual machine and select the virtual DVD player to launch Win8 installation.

The Win8 dev preview is a 64-bit version only with developers tools (Windows SDK for Metro style apps, Microsoft Visual Studio 11 Express for Windows Developer Preview). DirectX 11.1 SDK is also present…

Once the installation is completed, Win8 looks like as follows:

There is a horizontal slider to move the scren left to right. Win8 interface is designed for tablets! To get the usual desktop, you have to click on the small desktop icon. An there, we have the Win7-like desktop. Win8 comes with a new task-manager:

Win8 is compatible with Win7 apps:

On x86 and x64 PCs, Windows 8 supports Windows 7 desktop applications and devices so you don’t have to compromise or give up what you’re used to. On these PCs, your existing Windows 7-based applications just work.

Okay with VirtualBox, you don’t have access to OpenGL stuff, and Direct3D support is limited, but D3D9 seems to work. I successfully launched MSI Kombustor with the Direct3D 9 render path:

6 Responses to “Windows 8 Developer Preview, VirtualBox (Quick Test)”

Which perfectly makes sense imho. 32 bit is a skeleton in the closet now – as long as it’s supported, lazy developers will never port their stuff to 64 bit, despite its obvious benefits and it’s just an extra pressure on OS developers to try to keep up compatibility with old systems.